


Food for the Soul

by Berkett



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Burgers - Freeform, M/M, MM, Stargazing, Wine, business meetings, drunk, fancy resturants, french-fries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 01:25:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6308788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berkett/pseuds/Berkett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man who is tired of the life of meetings with businessmen in fancy resturants and yearns for simpler ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Food for the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> How Does Love Start? Well, Food Of Course

Food for the Soul

 

 

Arthur looked at the dreary menu that laid in front of him. He´d rather be somewhere else right now he´d realised. But, this needed to be done. So he pushed the feelings deep down and forgot about them. Well tried at least.  
Arthur were a part of his father’s corporation anyway so meeting with businessmen at fancy restaurants with their over-priced meals were something to be expected. And all of the businessmen wanted to impress father, even if it were with his son. Arthur did speak for his father and the company so, it was all the same to them. Money was money.  
As the waiter arrived Arthur did not meet his eyes, or her eyes. Arthur didn´t care to find out which whether the waiter was a man or a woman, he only sat and looked at the menu. Thinking nothing looked good on it. But after everyone else had placed their order on what kind of meals they wanted and what kind of expensive wine they´d ordered just to impress everyone else on their skill in wine, Arthur felt the burning on his face. That feeling one gets when everyone at the table were eying you. Well, that´s what they were doing. Them waiting to hear what he would order, that´s when he realised that he had made it worse, now he have to order something equally impressing or even something far more better. They, were not the only once that needed to impress. Arthur do work for his father.  
Arthur stared at the wine menu a bit more. He knew what food he would order that would impress but now came the tricky part, the wine. His mind began rolling and Arthur felt that he started to become lightheaded from all the pressure and unnerving feeling that he gets at fancy places and that´s when his mind flashed. A memory of his father and what he had said one time before. “Listen here, son. These pompous asshats care only for one thing and it´s a big one, and that is money. At these restaurant meetings pick something that is expensive. You know what, the more uneatable it looks, the more it will impress. So, pick something that grosses you out. Alright, son? Oh and when it comes to the wine . . . simply choose from the bottom of the list.”  
Bottom of the list? There, he saw it. Damn, he thought. The price is truly ridiculous.  
Arthur spoke the words of the meal he had chosen and just tapped lightly with his finger at the bottom of the wine list. Everybody saw when his finger trailed to the end of the wine list. And no one said a word. Some just glanced away, others rubbed their nose pretending to have an itch. Arthur knew it had worked. Impress achievements unlocked.  
The meeting ended with a resounding success. Business-hands clasping and shaking all around. Smiles . . . well, they looked real Arthur thought. He felt quiet pleased with that.  
His coat got returned to him as he ventured out of the restaurant. Outside stood his driver waiting with the car. The driver opened the door and Arthur stepped inside. The driver went and got into the driver-seat. “Where to, sir?” the man asked. “Home,” Arthur responded, unevenly. He could barely heard the driver acknowledge.  
Resting his forehead against the cool window he started to smell something. Arthur searched the car with his eyes from where he smelt it. Looking all bewildered the driver asked. “Is there something wrong, sir?”  
“No,” Arthur said, faster than he´d realised. He interrupted himself as he said it. “Well, there is this smell that I’m sensing. Smells of french-fries and, and—,” he cut himself of again.  
“Oh, that would be me, sir,” the driver said.  
“You?”  
“Yes, sir,”  
“You had french-fries?”  
“Yes, sir,”  
“In the car?”  
“Yes, sir,”  
“Oh. Alright,” Arthur said, indignantly.  
“And a burger, sir,” the driver added.  
“A burger, huh?”  
“Yes, sir,”  
“ . . . huh.” Arthur didn´t really know what to do. Or say. It took him a moment before he could speak. “So, whilst I have been inside that fucking shit hole of a place and listening to those men prune on and on about their new luxury villa in Tuscany and their new twenty something blonde wife, pretty new pool-boy and having to eat the food that makes me want to rip out my own tongue and bleed to death in order not to eat it or taste it, you, have been eating french-fries with a burger in this car?”  
“Yes, sir,”  
“Ah, you got to be kidding—,” Arthur said as he slumped down into the seat. “You know something,”  
“What is that, sir?”  
“You have it better, my friend,”  
“Do I, sir?”  
“Yea, you do,” Arthur scratched his head.  
“Guess that would be a matter of perspective, sir,”  
“No, no, no. You have it much better than most,” Arthur pointed at him in the rear-view mirror. Feeling the wine begin to kick in. “You know what, get me to one of these french-fries places with the burgers. I want one,”  
“Yes, sir,”  
“And stop that,” Arthur wagged his finger at the mirror again. “That thing, the thing. About calling me `yes, sir´. Don’t do that,” Arthur frowned.  
“Then what should I call you then?” The driver turned the wheel around a corner and Arthur fell the other way and banged his head of the seat and bounced right back up. He felt a bit embarrassed about that, he did not know if the driver had seen him do that, as a matter of fact, he wasn´t even sure he saw it himself. All he could think about was that if they did crash the car, the seats would make an excellent airbag. Silly thing to believe that a bag filled with air could save a person. They should really install seats around the car instead. How brilliant would that be? Arthur smiled at his own clever idea. “Wait, what were we talking about, again?”  
“Your name. You wanted me to call you something else.”  
“Right,” Arthur remembered. “Right, right. So here is the deal, you don´t call me `yes, sir´, you call me Arthur and I will call you . . . wait, what? What´s your name again. Driver, driver? That´s not it,” Arthur shimmed himself forward. Squeaking noise came from the leather seats. “It´s not an annoying sound for me, `cause I´m making it,” He put his head almost side by side with the driver´s. “What is your name? I don´t know it. I don´t,” Arthur haven´t felt this intrigued about anything the whole day. There was something about the driver that made him feel happy. Made him feel . . . what was the word? Relaxed. That was the word. Arthur smiled again.  
“Jimmy,”  
“Hmm?”  
“My name,” Jimmy repeated.  
“Oh, right. Jimmy. That´s your name. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” Arthur leaned back into the seat again. And a moment later shot back up again. “Is that short for something, like, James, or, or . . . hmm, guess that is all it could be,” Leaning back in the seat.  
“Jonathan.”  
“JONATHAN,” He bolted back up with his face next to Jimmy. “That is a lovely name,”  
Their eyes making contact for a brief moment. “Thank you, Arthur,” Jimmy said, keeping his eyes on the road as much he could, but it wasn´t easy with Arthur in the backseat drunk and moving back and forth. Yet, it didn´t bother him. Jimmy was just more concerned about keeping the car on the right side of the road and not up on the asphalt of the pedestrians. Jimmy kind of liked seeing Arthur like this. Not drunk but, happy.  
Arthur caught a glance of a smile in Jimmy in the rear-view mirror. He couldn´t help but smile at that himself. The man´s face wasn´t half bad. Actually, it got more wonderful the more he looked at it.  
Jimmy had gotten Arthur his french-fries with burger and Arthur had been nice enough and gotten Jimmy a second one as well. Jimmy thanked him for it.  
They had driven out of the city to find a nice spot to eat. It had only taken twenty minutes to exit the city to find a place. And the view was spectacular. It made Arthur sober up a bit and the fresh air helped with getting him able to stand upright too.  
“Have you always been this lightweight?” Jimmy asked, as he saw Arthur steady himself on the car. Arthur didn´t reply on that just gave a side glance at him. Jimmy smiled.  
They sat on the hood of the car whilst eating the food. Arthur had made a remark about the hood being nice and toasty on his bum. He asked Jimmy how it felt on his bum and quickly turned red in the face.  
The silence that followed didn´t make it better for him. Then it broke as Jimmy responded that it felt good for him too.  
Arthur had finished his french-fries with burger and placed both his hands on the hood of the car so that he could lean back a bit.  
They sat in comfortable silence, but Arthur wished he had something to say but did not know what.  
“Do you know the story about the Pleiades?”  
Arthur was taken a back a bit. Wondering whom it was that spoke. Him, or Jimmy?  
He turned his eyes to Jimmy and saw the man looking up at the night sky.  
Feeling that he had been staring at the man for quite some time Arthur said, “Um, no,” Why did he say that? He knew about the Pleiades but felt pushed in to answering too quickly. Damn it.  
“They are the Seven Sister,” Jimmy pointed. “Right over there,” his arm stretched out. Arthur knew this, however he couldn´t bear to mention it.  
Arthur had studied the stars since childhood. One of the reasons, well the only reason he had made his family invest in and observatory. And now he had his own telescope to play with. Bigger than anyone else’s. But he listened quietly as Jimmy explained the story he´d known since a child. Jimmy told the story quite well. Arthur realised he could listen to the man talk for a long time.  
Then the silence came again. Both now leaning up against the front window of the car gazing up at the clear night sky.  
Their fingers touched.

 

the end

 

 

written by: G. Berkett Ash  
march 21st 2016


End file.
